As is known in the art, enterprises in the data storage industry perpetually face demand from their customers to produce storage solutions that achieve ever-increasing data storage density. One approach to achieving high storage density is to pack as many data storage drives (such as, for example, magnetic data storage drives, generally known as disk drives (or Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and electronic data storage drives, generally known as solid state drives (SSDs)) as possible into an array enclosure.
This approach, however, is fraught with difficulties. For example, spacing between drives installed in neighboring chassis bays or slots within an electrical cabinet is often too small to permit personnel, limited to use of their fingertips, to establish a firm grasp of an individual drive. Thus, such personnel can have difficulties removing a drive from a chassis, not being able to apply sufficient extracting force to overcome the resistance of mated connectors between the drive and an enclosure midplane. Inserting a drive into the midplane can also become an imprecise art; personnel may not insert the drive sufficiently far to make adequate electrical contact. In addition, some drives require a companion “personality card” or interposer (a printed circuit board having electrical components configured to match the operation of the drive to the protocol to be used by the drive and thus determines the functionality of the drive.
A typical data storage system includes data moving circuitry and an array of disk drives. Some data storage systems fit within standard-sized equipment cabinets or racks. Such cabinets are commonly available in a variety of standard heights (e.g., 4U, 3U, 2U and 1U, where U is a standard measure of vertical height in the equipment cabinet and is equal to 1.75 inches in accordance with the EIA-310-D industry standard). Still further, it would be desirable to have a drive carrier adapted for use with a 2.5 or 3.5 inch drive and to store such drive within the carrier in a cabinet having a 2U or 3U space. Further, carriers may introduce complexity and expense to the constructing drive assemblies, often involving several small, hard-to-handle hardware components, such as screws and rivets.